5 Ways to Celebrate World Environment Day in NYC

If you missed the boat on celebrating Earth Day, you’re in luck! You can redeem yourself by celebrating World Environment Day on June 5th. Or, if you did celebrate Earth Day, World Environment Day is just another opportunity for you to give a little extra love to a global cause. And even if you don’t do anything charitable, you can still celebrate by getting outside and enjoying the fresh air. Here are a few of the top ways you can celebrate World Environment Day!

1. Central Park Bike Tour

Whether you want to rent a bike and explore Central Park on your own or you prefer to go on a guided bike tour, you can’t go wrong with a bike ride in Central Park. In fact, even native New Yorkers might not have seen all that Central Park has to offer yet. So take a nice afternoon to book a bike tour or just rent a bike for a couple hours to ride around at your leisure. Either way, going for a bike ride is a fantastic way to adventure through Central Park!

2. Go Kayaking

Being such a hustle and bustle type of city, you would think that there wouldn't be many opportunities to partake in adventurous outdoor activities. However, you’d be shocked at how many opportunities there are to go kayaking in NYC! In fact, most places to go kayaking in NYC will let you do so without paying a single dime. You can kayak at the Hudson River Park out of the Manhattan Community Boathouse or the Downtown Boathouse, both of which are free. If you prefer to canoe over kayaking, then you should definitely head over to the North Brooklyn Boat Club where you can go out for an adventure on the Newtown Creek on their giant, 25-foot canoes!

3. Brass Monkey

If you’d prefer to hang out at the bar with a few friends and some cocktails over spending time outside, then I’ve got something for you that has the best of both worlds. You can enjoy your drinks and good company outside in the nice spring breeze at the rooftop bar at the Brass Monkey. It's a perfect spot to visit with your co-workers for happy hour or catch a drink with your significant other after a long day of work. If you’re going to spend World Environment Day at the bar, at least get yourself up to the rooftop bar at Brass Monkey to enjoy the fresh air while you’re sipping on your favorite drink!

4. Yoga at Bryant Park

It just so happens that June 5th, World Environment Day, happens to fall on a Tuesday - which is good news for all you yogis out there. Every Tuesday at Bryant Park from 10 am to 11 am is a free weekly yoga class right on the grass. And even if you’re not a yogi, it’s no problem; the yoga classes at Bryant Park are for yogis of all skill levels! So even if it’s your first time ever doing yoga, you’ll be able to keep up with the class. They even provide you a yoga mat to use for free during the class! If you can’t make it to Bryant Park for yoga on Tuesday mornings, they offer the same weekly classes on Thursdays from 6 pm to 7 pm also!

5. OutdoorFest 2018

If you’ve never heard of OutdoorFest before, you’re missing out on an awesome opportunity to have some adventurous outdoor fun. OutdoorFest 2018 is taking place from June 1st to June 10th, which means World Environment Day falls right in the middle of the fun. So why not partake in OutdoorFest this year and celebrate World Environment Day all at once? OutdoorFest has a ton of awesome outdoor activities to offer such as surfing lessons, sailing lessons, yoga classes, and canoeing on the Hudson River among many other things!

Bonus!

To wrap up OutdoorFest this year, there’s “a day of service” on June 10th to support the non-profit sponsors that help make OutdoorFest possible. This is a great way to celebrate World Environment Day in a charitable way. If you’re unable to make it to the VolunteerFest on June 10th, but you still want to celebrate World Environment Day in a generous way, consider making a donation to your non-profit of choice. Or if you want to take it a step further, you could organize a fundraiser of your own to raise money! It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate; even a simple bottle and can drive in your neighborhood can raise a substantial amount of money to support local environmentally-conscious organizations.

There are plenty of ways to celebrate World Environment Day. You don’t need to donate hundreds of dollars or hours of your time to be apart of the festivities; simply being outside, enjoying, and appreciating our environment will suffice. So get outdoors, soak up the vitamin D, and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine!